When
do childrenís characteristics change to those exhibited by adults?

Now
thereís a question! In the way they think and with such a multiplicity of
things children do which adults donít, it is actually very hard to identify
exactly when child-like behaviour has fully stopped and the individual is deemed
to be behaving like an adult. For almost all children, the process is a gradual
one extending through puberty and beyond. Indeed for a number, some child-like
qualities pervade right through their otherwise adult lives.

There is one specific trait, however, which does appear to manifest itself quite
differently in the adult, as compared to the child: the reaction to rain.

Look
outside onto any street in the
United Kingdom
when the first few drops of rain arrive. Every single woman carrying one will
immediately put up her umbrella. In fact, some will even have theirs employed
before the precipitation descends, in readiness for when it does appear. Notice
too that having been first with the protection, the distaff side is always the
last to re-furl its umbrellas, a not inconsiderable number of women even walking
around with them fully deployed long after the rain has departed.

Men,
it seems, manifest considerably less urgency in unsheathing an umbrella - if
they actually have one with them in the first place - and are much more willing
to collapse it as the rain begins to ease off. Nevertheless, men do react to the
onset of rain, generally by quickening their pace, adjusting their collars or
holding a newspaper above themselves, heading for the most sheltered parts of
the street or even, as if any excuse were needed, diving into the nearest public
house!

Yet
contrast all this behaviour to that of children. That same observer whose window
happens to overlook a school playground will note a complete disregard by
youngsters to the approach and onset of rain.
The
pluviophilic children simply carry on playing completely regardless of the
spots, drips or even the arrival of a heavier onslaught. It is always - always -
teachers or parents who have to cajole children towards shelter and, without
their presence, the outside playing would continue uninterrupted except,
perhaps, during the most ferocious drenching or prolonged deluge.

Accordingly,
that begs the question, when exactly did the utterly carefree child turn into
the umbrella yielding woman or the scurrying man? At what point did the
childís former, unconcerned nature give way to the general reactions of the
adult society around him (or her)? When did childhood die?

Perhaps
a study brave enough to try and delve to any degree into this particular
behavioural aspect might point out that it depends where one lives in the land,
because it is true that rain is more prevalent in some areas than in others.
Possibly the adult residents in these damper locations have more of an immunity
to reacting against wet weather than others living elsewhere, simply because it
commonplace and is seen as more of a part of everyday life. If this is true,
then it would certainly apply to the children - say in somewhere like South
Wales which, when I lived there, seemed to have more than its fair share of rain
and of a variety which bounced higher than elsewhere!

The
other aspect I noticed about Welsh rain, during my residence in the
Principality, was that once it arrived, it seemed very reluctant to depart.
Continuous downpours for two or more days were not especially uncommon there and
yet in the midst of this the children, as they had for decades, carried on with
their regular round of going back and forth to school and playing with friends
and siblings, all without giving much thought to the weather, save where it
seriously impinged on their outdoor leisure time.

There are a handful of children - long since adults - who will tell you about a
certain wet spell half a century ago and the first day the downpours ceased. For
Melvyn, Jeff, Philip, Gaynor and many others just like them, stepping outside
their front doors into the village that first morning after the rains had gone
was like entering a different world, because there was a dense fog. It came
about through a combination of no wind, the high quantity of water vapour in the
saturated atmosphere after the recent drenching and a slight drop in
temperature, causing the evaporating moisture to condense to form a thick
blanket. Visibility, they recall, was 50 yards at most and as the children
walked to school, all the usual morning noises from the village and beyond
seemed to be muffled by the fog.

Of
course, to the children this was all a great adventure; something not unknown
but sufficiently different from the rain of the past few days to add a degree of
excitement into their routine. Despite their apparent disregard for the torrents
which had been falling, they were glad it had stopped and secretly hoped the fog
would clear by the next day because that was when the half-term holidays started
and they were looking forward to being able to play outside again with their
friends.

In
fact, unbeknown to them, the sun had already begun weakly to break through on
the hills high above the village and, looking down from there, the fog along the
valley floor could be seen very slowly dissipating. Still, however, it obscured
the view of the children as they congregated at the school that morning, it
softened the noises emanating from the playground and it deadened the sound of
the school bell, in immediate response to which the children stopped their play,
lined up and filed into the school building.

Back
then, the first task of the day was normally for the whole school to meet
together in the hall for the daily assembly, which included prayers and hymn
singing. On this occasion, though, because it was the last day before the
half-term holidays, school assembly was rescheduled for the afternoon so the
children could finish the day on a rousing note and be dismissed en masse.
Accordingly, on this particular day, after hanging their coats on the little
pegs in the corridors, the children headed straight for their appropriate
classrooms for morning registration and the start of their lessons.

The
time was 9.15am.
The
date was 21 October 1966.
The
name of the village was Aberfan.

----------------------

Within
just five minutes, by 9.20am, the child-like qualities of Melvyn, Jeff, Philip
and Gaynor had been swept away, swiftly and completely, for they had become
victims of a tragic, terrifying and haunting disaster.

One
and a half thousand cubic feet of mining debris piled above the village,
saturated by the recent deluge and turned into liquefied slurry, started to
slide. Within five minutes it had engulfed the
village
of Aberfan in a high speed landslide. As well as a farm and twenty terrace
houses being destroyed, the massive collapse smashed into the village school,
filling the classrooms instantly with thick mud and rubble.
The
inundation rose up to 39 feet in places. Melvyn, Philip and Gaynor miraculously
survived. Jeff, with water from a burst main rapidly rising up to his neck, also
survived - he was pulled out of the saturated black mess just before 11am. After
him, nobody was brought out alive. The
eventual death toll was 28 adults and 116 children, mostly between the ages of
seven and ten. Childhood in the village died that day.